Theft by Finding

by David Sedaris

  April 17, 1981

  Raleigh

  Today I dug a ditch and later it rained, so I finished painting Lou Stark’s living room. She paid me $20, bean-burger mix, and four turkey legs. One of them I took upstairs to Gretchen’s cat, Neil, who had been asleep on a blanket and wheezed with delight.

  April 21, 1981

  Raleigh

  I thought I was back to eating pancakes. They’re nothing to look forward to, but a box of the instant mix (just add water) is only $1.05 at Big Star. I’d just stirred up a batch when Mom came by with some groceries. I accepted them reluctantly—“Aw, what are you doing?”—but am so grateful. In the bag was a chicken, a brick of frozen flounder, orange juice, a can of peaches, a loaf of bread, and a can of pinto beans. The only way to assuage my guilt is to make a super-beautiful papier-mâché rabbit for next Sunday. I started one a few days ago, and as of now it looks more like a dog than a Greek Easter bunny.

  July 3, 1981

  Raleigh

  There is a new cancer that strikes only homosexual men. I heard about it on the radio tonight.

  July 13, 1981

  Raleigh

  Joe interviewed a carpenter named T.W. for a job and asked at the end, “Now, do you have any questions for me?”

  “Yeah,” T.W. said. “Did you get any pussy last night?”

  July 14, 1981

  Raleigh

  I’ve had it with construction work. Today I:

  stepped on three nails

  was stung by a bee

  fell off a flatbed truck

  lost control of a wheelbarrow and drove it into a tree with everyone watching

  The day started when I went with Joe to the labor pool and picked up a man named Luther, who is black and has five kids. He can push a full wheelbarrow up a ramp with no problem. He can carry sixteen two-by-fours at one time. “I got five kids, so I can do anything,” he kept saying. His only question—and he asked it all day—was “What’s he doing here?” Meaning me.

  Luther laughed hardest when I fell off the truck. When I returned from the van after looking for staples, he said I’d been gone so long he figured I’d walked into town. That got a great response. In total, he told on me three times.

  To top it all off, after coming home and cleaning up, I went next door to the IHOP and was ignored by all the waitresses, who are mad at me for some reason.

  July 17, 1981

  Raleigh

  T.W. the carpenter looks like Hansel from the fairy tale. Not Hansel grown-up, but just Hansel bigger. He has a Dutch Boy haircut and went to Vietnam in 1968. “You ever seen an anteater?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “What about your uncle?”

  T.W. is married to Candy, and they have two daughters, Raelyn and Lacey. They’re not allowed to date until they’re sixteen. That’s the rule, and the older one has been complaining about it. “She’s hot as a nigger bride,” T.W. says. For lunch today he had a Little Debbie cake, a Mello Yello, and a can of Beanee Weenees.

  July 20, 1981

  Raleigh

  Today I applied insulating jackets to Rob’s water heaters. He’s the owner of the house we’re working on, and sometimes he can be obnoxious. “Well, that’s a Jew for you,” Bobby, one of the carpenters, said.

  To make him uncomfortable, I told him that I was Jewish. Bobby then explained that there are two kinds of Jews. “There are Jews and then there are Jews,” he said.

  Bobby’s wife was in a trailer fire. There are eleven kids in his family. I questioned his constant use of the word nigger, and afterward he and T.W. used it nonstop just to annoy me.

  August 2, 1981

  Raleigh

  Ronnie is incensed over the royal wedding. “Did you know that silkworms spun the fabric for her dress?”

  “Silkworms spin everyone’s silk,” I told her. “That’s where silk comes from.”

  Somewhere she heard that four hundred bears were killed and turned into hats. We went to the movies, and all I thought the entire time was Where on earth does she get her information from?

  August 12, 1981

  Raleigh

  Today T.W. and I worked alone, nailing siding onto the Pratts’ house. I made mistakes, and he was patient until I took a measurement and marked the tape instead of the board. He asked then if I thought I’d ever amount to anything. His tone suggested that if I did think I’d amount to anything, I was fooling myself.

  T.W. comments on every woman he sees, with no exceptions. We ate lunch together at the Golden Skillet. A waitress was bending over to clear a table, and he smacked his lips and commented loudly on what he’d rather be eating.

  Spook girls have good legs, he says. “There’s a pretty little spook girl works over to the nigger store. I’d like to take her home to my wife and say, ‘Here you go. Treat her like a sister.’ Get me some pigger nussy, some soul hole.”

  “Monkey and the baboon playing in the grass. Monkey sticks his fingers up the baboon’s ass.”

  “It was easier to get pussy back when girls didn’t have no cars and had to depend on men for rides.”

  “Slippery as a puppy’s peter.”

  “Get me a granny raisin cake. It’s got a pitcher of an old granny on the cover with her hair all up in a bun. If they don’t got none, buy me a male Hershey bar—you know, the kind with the nuts.”

  To a fifteen-year-old girl he called out, “C’mere so I can smell of it.”

  At the end of the day he decided that I’m too shy with women.

  August 13, 1981

  Raleigh

  Today T.W. asked, “Did you get any cootie last night?” At the sight of one girl, he said, “She could make a bulldog break her chain.” When a young woman passed on a bike, he yelled after her, “Don’t you know it’s illegal to peddle pussy in this town?”

  August 14, 1981

  Raleigh

  Today I helped T.W., mainly fetching tools. He says my problem is that I had me some college and that all those students at Kent State should have been lined up and shot. T.W. is a member of the Johnston County KKK. At lunchtime he said he was so hungry he could eat a horse dick fried in tar. We went to the Big Star to buy lunch. It’s my grocery store, the one I shop at, and I withered when he started barking at women like a puppy.

  T.W.’s best hunting dog just died. He has her kidneys and her spleen in a jar in the front seat of his truck. After work he planned to take them to the vet.

  August 27, 1981

  Emerald Isle, North Carolina

  Dad wants to buy a beach house and name it Apedia, after Yia Yia’s hometown in Greece. He does this every year—gets us all cranked up about a cottage. The real estate agent told him at the start of our vacation that the age of the private beach house is over, that times are changing, and that he might want to consider a condo instead. One of the ones we’re staying in is for sale, so Mom sits up late, drinking wine and thinking of how she might rearrange the interior. If we buy a place, we’ll need to rent it out at least ten weeks a year. That means furnishing it with stuff we won’t cry over when it gets broken or damaged or stolen.

  Dad says, “A guy needs a place where he can gaze into the ocean and sort things out.” It costs more to have a condo on the end, with a view of the water, but he says hell, you might as well go all out.

  Today I got a pair of beach sneakers called Gold Seal Sea Dogs.

  August 30, 1981

  Raleigh

  On our last night at the beach, at around three a.m., we started throwing sopping-wet washcloths at each other. The sound of one smacking against someone’s face, or their back, was the funniest thing ever. Tiffany was great company this week. Every night we got high on the beach and made up coastal limericks. This morning Dad had us wait in the hot car while he returned the keys to Carteret County Realty and talked to someone about financing the condo he swears we’re buying. He was in there for twenty minutes. The condo is $110,000. I can’t believe we’re falling for this again.

  Sept
ember 17, 1981

  Raleigh

  I’ve had it with Briggs Hardware. Again today when they asked what I was looking for, I was at a loss to tell them. “Something wooden,” I’ve said in the past. “Something shiny.”

  I don’t want a tool to do something with; I’m just looking for something to draw. In the toy department, I asked to look at one of their jack-in-the-boxes. The saleswoman got snippy when I didn’t want to buy it, and when I reached for my knapsack and said I could explain, she said, “I don’t want to see none of your old mess.”

  I turned to leave and saw all the employees standing at the front counter talking about me. They think they’re hot stuff because the store was pictured in National Geographic.

  From there I went to Monroe Tire & Service. No luck, and as I was leaving, a man came in with a horribly burned face.

  September 26, 1981

  Raleigh

  While I was walking down Hillsborough Street after visiting Lyn last night, a carload of drunk guys pulled alongside me and shouted threats. “Fucking faggot!” they yelled. “We’ll kick your ass.” They were really into it, acting as if I’d done something to them personally, or to their mothers. At one point I was pretty sure they were going to get out of the car and start something. I wondered then if it would be too undignified to take off and run into the Hilton. As it was, I ignored them until they drove off. “Faggot.” It seems to be written all over my face lately.

  October 1, 1981

  Raleigh

  Tomorrow I return to work at Mrs. Winters’s house. Last spring her porch was painted, and I’m to scrape up the drips. She’ll likely stand over me while I do it, monitor me the way she did when I removed her storm windows. She’ll play radio station WPJL (We Proclaim Jesus Lord) and pick, pick, pick.

  She and her husband cleaned Trailways buses for forty years, and because they’re black, I imagine they’ve heard every insult in the book.

  Tonight at the IHOP I sat next to four NC State students. One of them was planning to break up with his girlfriend because she’d spoken to another guy. Another was short on money, and his friends offered to cover his bill if he’d drink the entire pitcher of raspberry syrup. I was willing to add another 50 cents if he could do it without throwing up.

  I’m going through another talk-radio phase. Last night I listened to Open Line, where the guest was Hap Hansen, the channel 28 weatherman, who explained how he lost forty pounds. Most of the calls were from friends of his.

  October 6, 1981

  Raleigh

  I’ve paid my rent and my phone bill, leaving me with 43 cents. In the late afternoon I went with Mom and Dad, who are thinking of buying a rental unit on Clark Avenue, a duplex—this instead of the beach house that was all just talk. The current tenants weren’t home, and while I was walking through the place, almost snooping but not quite, I came across a kitten taking a nap in a red NC State beanbag chair.

  Last night on Open Line, the guests were from the Anti-Defamation League. Klan members and jerks called, saying they’d drive the Jew carpetbaggers out of the South and back to where they came from. I am into Open Line.

  October 7, 1981

  Raleigh

  Lisa and I have started taking Greek classes at the church. Our teacher is Jimmy Nixon, and there are nine students. Six of them are children, and I can’t figure out what they’re doing there. Most of them sound excellent to me, though, really, what do I know? Class is two hours long. During the fifteen-minute break that comes in the middle, Lisa and I ran out front to smoke. There is one full-blooded American in the class, a woman who’s taking it to satisfy her husband.

  October 9, 1981

  Raleigh

  I had a cheeseburger for breakfast and then plastered Daisy Leach’s hallway. On her refrigerator is posted a recipe for “Granny’s Bible Cake.” Ingredients include John chapters 12 through 18, Matthew chapter 3, and a pinch of Leviticus. Miss Leach is planning to paint her kitchen yellow, like her neighbor Mrs. McGillis did.

  I mentioned this to Mrs. McGillis, who said, “Monkey see, monkey do.”

  October 12, 1981

  Raleigh

  I’ve started the now-empty Jernigan apartment. Someone in their family left a note on the bathroom door reading, GENTLEMEN: BE LIKE DAD, NOT LIKE SIS. LIFT THE LID BEFORE YOU PISS.

  They left behind a Day-Glo poster of astrological sex positions, which made me think of the apartment a few doors down and of a picture Gretchen and I found while emptying everything out. It was a crude drawing of a man screwing a woman from behind, and on the bottom was written ROLL OVER, MY DEER.

  There are always treasures left behind at the Empire apartments.

  October 19, 1981

  Raleigh

  There are no grocery stores directly en route from Mom and Dad’s rental units on Colleton. You pass a couple of 7-Eleven–type places, but nowhere that has actual food. If I ride a half mile out of my way, I can stop at the Winn-Dixie on Person Street.

  All the fruits and vegetables there are prepackaged, so you can’t buy just one onion or lemon or sweet potato. It’s all in plastic, so you can’t even squeeze something to tell if it’s ripe. Their stacks of canned specials are a joke. How are two small cans of tomatoes for $1 a bargain? The prices are crazy, which kills me, seeing as it’s in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. The cashiers are white and young, wearing Van Halen T-shirts under their uniform tops. I passed one of the girls on her break and she was sitting on the filthy floor next to the entrance. They don’t even carry pints of milk at this Winn-Dixie—you have to buy a whole expensive gallon.

  October 23, 1981

  Raleigh

  While I was riding my bike home from Colleton after painting last night, three black guys started throwing rocks and bottles at me. Again I was faced with a decision: Do I give them the pleasure of speeding up, or do I just continue at a regular pace and pretend this isn’t happening? I’m guessing that if one of the bottles had hit me in the head, they’d just have laughed and run away while I crashed onto the street.

  This morning a girl almost ran over Lou Stark at the crosswalk in front of Jimmy’s Market. Lou was together enough to get the license plate. Then she called the girl’s parents. She’s from Mount Olive, apparently, and Lou got her into big trouble.

  The three who threw rocks and bottles at me were on foot, so I couldn’t get anyone in trouble.

  October 25, 1981

  Raleigh

  Again last night I went to Lyn’s and watched The PTL (Praise the Lord) Club. Jim Bakker, the cohost, is desperate for $50 million. He looks like a baby monkey. Not just a baby. Not just a monkey.

  October 29, 1981

  Raleigh

  When Gretchen went off to RISD she left behind her cat, Neil, who was abandoned a few months earlier by Randall. After swearing she was not my responsibility, I let her in. Now every day I regret it. Neil breaks every pet rule in the book. If she were a person, she’d hang out at the Trailways station.

  November 6, 1981

  Raleigh

  I worked for Joe, painting solar window boxes that look like coffins and will be installed later this week in low-income areas.

  Neil is being punished for jumping onto the counter and eating my raw scrambled eggs. I’ll probably untie her tomorrow.

  November 10, 1981

  Raleigh

  We began installing the solar window boxes in Garner, where everyone has either ceramic animals or junked cars in their yard. The first woman whose house we went to lives with her husband and her father, who has cancer. She told us that with bursitis in both shoulders it’s difficult to raise her windows, and of course Pa’s no help, what with the cancer and all. When we arrived, she put two of her three dogs in the cellar. They commenced barking and she yelled, “Peanut and Pee Wee, y’all need to shut up!” Finally she opened the door a few inches, and when the dogs stuck their faces through, she kicked them into silence. One of them stole the slipper off her foot, and that made her
even madder.

  The woman said that $100 worth of heating oil now costs $175 and that she don’t know what the hell Ronald Reagan is doing to us poor people. Did we know? she asked.

  The last stop of the day was behind the Purina plant. I’d never been to that neighborhood. Every house we went to had TVs on.

  The window boxes are easy to install. Tomorrow we’ll do more. Today it was seasonably cold and the sky was white.

  November 11, 1981

  Raleigh

  At all the rural houses we stopped at today, the men wore overalls. One gave Bobby a mess of collards for his wife. A mess of collards, he said, spells good sex.

  A woman in Garner told us that she tries her best to serve the Lord but that these are hard times for Christians. Before we left she asked us to repair her screen door so she can look out at the landscape God has provided her.

  November 21, 1981

  Raleigh

  A friend of Susan Toplikar’s was hit by a cinder block thrown from a passing truck. He’d been walking along the side of the road, and the cinder block broke several ribs. After crawling onto the porch of a house, he banged on the door, but the people wouldn’t answer until he passed out.

  1982